Chapter 68 #3
Our stares locked in heavy silence. I’d never told anyone the details of the vision that Luther and I had shared that night in the armory, then again at the Challenging, and I knew Luther never would. The only way Brecke could have recreated the armor in it so perfectly was divine interference.
Or if the vision was a future doomed to come.
My arms lifted without thinking, my body accepting what my mind was still trying to understand.
Luther looped the belt around me, and Alixe stepped forward to hold the armor in place as he buckled it at my waist. She shuddered when she let it go, shaking out her hands as if the godstone plates had been painful to touch.
Luther grabbed the breastplate, and across the bond, I felt his spirit darken like a cloud passing over the sun.
As he draped it over my head and latched the fastenings at my sides, I ran a finger over the armor’s edge.
Every time I’d touched godstone in the past, it brought a wave of unpleasant sensations.
I should have realized much sooner that a corpse was the fuel needed to make it.
Touching godstone felt like touching death itself.
But this godstone felt different. Warmer. Familiar.
I looked at Brecke. “This armor—was it made using the godstone from Mort-Feu Pass?”
“No,” Alixe answered for him. “When he told me he wanted to make this, I gave him the godstone from your family’s home.”
Agony lanced through my soul.
My father.
The armor was made from his ashes. The last physical trace of him left on earth was now enrobing me, protecting me, the only thing standing between my heart and a blade.
“I discussed it with your mother and brother first,” Alixe said gently. “They agreed it’s what Andrei would have wanted.”
“I made breastplates for them, too,” Brecke said. “He’ll be with all of you today.”
A sob caught in my throat as emotions overwhelmed me. Luther’s fingers brushed against mine to lend me his strength. I mutely swayed on my feet while he finished securing the rest of the armor to my shoulders and legs.
I managed a soft, broken “thank you” to Brecke, then Luther led me to my horse and helped me mount.
The image of their Queen, godstone painted on her face and forged in armor on her body, must have been a fearsome sight, because the gathered army instantly hushed as their rainbow eyes turned upon me.
I spotted my mother’s in their midst, gleaming as she took me in, and my mate’s, blue-grey and reverent, fist thumping to his chest in fierce salute.
Others joined him—my advisors first, then the Royal Guard and the women soldiers of Ignios, then Runa and Enness and their crew, the half-mortals from Umbros, a contingent of Unhoused Descended, and, finally, the Houses of Lumnos City.
The mortals were too proud to echo a Descended salute, but their ripple of bowing heads was, for me, hardest won and most deeply cherished.
At the far edge of the grounds, the Centenaries watched from their camp, the only tents that still remained. Symond stood the furthest, hands in his pockets, dark eyes fixed on me.
My gaze swept across my gathered army. I could not really call them mine, when they were driven by their own survival more than fealty to my command, but they’d allowed me to lead them. The Crown I wore had won me their attention. I, Diem Bellator, had won their respect.
And when I asked them to fight, they answered the call.
“The enemy we face is united by one thing: vengeance,” I said loudly.
“Great wrongs have been done to them, I won’t deny it.
Too many of you here can say the same. I understand the anger that brings.
I know it well myself.” My eyes fell on Doriel, whose gaze guiltily dropped.
“But healing, true healing, doesn’t need revenge. It needs change.”
I pulled Sorrow’s Edge from its sheath, the gold writing on its godstone blade glittering in the blood sun’s scarlet light.
“We fight today for a future that all of us deserve, but none have ever seen. A world where no man, no Crown, and no god may decide who or what we will be. We fight so the borders we’re born in don’t become the bars of a cage we can never leave.
We fight together, not in spite of the wrongs of our past, but because of them. Today, we fight for a new Emarion.”
“A new Emarion,” my mother shouted.
“New Emarion,” the Guardians cheered. The chant spread across the grounds, joined by more voices with every round.
“And when we emerge victorious,” I yelled, “let us remember our past, and let it never happen again.”
Another deafening cheer rose from the gathered crowd, fists and blades pumping the air. I pointed the tip of Sorrow’s Edge at the blood sun and hushed my voice to a whisper meant only for the gods.
“I’m no one’s Herald of Vengeance, and I’m not your Ravager of Realms or your Destroyer of Crowns,” I growled, recalling the titles they’d once bestowed. “But I am the Daughter of the Forgotten.” My eyes narrowed. “And I’ll choose my own fucking fate.”